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Filters, Batteries, and Water Heaters. Oh My!

Man Fixing a Water Heater in Newburgh Rental PropertyFall it’s the best season to perform regular maintenance on some of the hardest-working devices in your rental property. By doing important interior maintenance items during this season, you’re making the best use of the season’s time. You’re not only making sure everything is working well but you’re also preparing your home to run safely and smoothly all winter long. These maintenance items include checking and cleaning filters, batteries, and water heaters. Some of which may need to be replaced, depending on its condition. All of these tasks have to be done regularly to make sure your rental property is safe for your tenants.

It’s important that your Newburgh rental property’s air filters be changed regularly. These filters keep your property’s HVAC system clean and running efficiently. Because of this reason, it’s clear to see that changing the air filters in your rental home is an important part of seasonal maintenance. As the winter months draw near, residents would want to stay indoors more. That means they’ll let furnaces work harder to keep out the cold. For this reason, we can see the importance of keeping your filters clean. There are all sorts of HVAC systems and they use different filters. So, depending on which type of filter your system requires, you may need to change the filters as often as every 30 days, every three months, or even every six months. While you may be thinking that this would be a good thing to delegate to your tenants, that may not be such a good idea. The chances that they’re going to forget or not change the filters often enough are high. This neglect in maintenance will put a strain on your HVAC system and will result in its life being shortened and the efficiency of the unit reduced.

Fall is also a great season to test and change the batteries in your rental property’s smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. These devices need to be functioning properly to ensure the safety of your tenants. For instance, there’s a fire and one of your tenants gets hurt. Then the investigation shows that one of your smoke detectors wasn’t functioning properly because it ran out of batteries. What’s going to happen next? It’s almost a certainty that you’d be getting sued. So, to put it differently, it’s critical that these devices are kept functioning properly.

There are different kinds of smoke and carbon monoxide detectors. Some have lithium batteries that can last up to ten years— which is ideal since that is also the useful life of a smoke or carbon monoxide detector—while others need to have their batteries changed every six to twelve months. However, in spite of the kinds of batteries your devices may have, you should still see to it that the batteries are being tested on a regular basis and replaced when needed. Hundreds of people are injured or killed in house fires every year. Some of these tragedies could be attributed to the smoke detectors in their homes not going off when it should have. If you give this task to your tenant, what guarantee do you have that they would do it? What would happen instead, is that your property’s smoke detectors may get damaged— especially if they haven’t been taught how to do proper maintenance. This means you would have additional costs to replace the devices and increased liability.

Then we’ve got one of the most frequently used devices in a rental home— the water heater. Despite being used so much, it’s often forgotten when it’s time to do property maintenance tasks. It shouldn’t be neglected or forgotten. Cleaning your property’s water heater is important to keep it working efficiently. Over time, sediment builds up in the tank of a water heater, making it less efficient and even leading to clogged water lines.

You can easily avoid these problems by flushing your water heater once every six months or so. The task takes time to do but it should be done so your expensive water heater unit can work efficiently. This may be a task you’d also want to assign to your tenants. But if you do that, you really have no guarantee that they’ll clean out the water heater properly. What may happen instead, especially if they mess up, is give you more problems.

Neglecting these maintenance items can have serious consequences and you may end up paying a lot more on expensive repairs. But requesting that your tenant change or clean the filters, batteries, and water heater in your Newburgh rental property is not the best option. While it is true that you could do the jobs yourself, but the best option is still to get a company like Real Property Management Results to manage all the property maintenance you need to do. We offer a full range of maintenance services that would keep your property in great condition. These services would also keep your tenants safe from harm. With us working by your side, you would be free to do the things that matter most for the growth of your real estate investing business. Contact us today for more information.

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